Yeah its not as lightweight as I would like in terms of module-install footprint. Then again, nearly all of that is DBIx::Class. While I do see plenty of room for improvement for Galileo, I doubt it will be lightening the DBIx::Class requirement. Not only does it allow me to write it without any direct SQL, it now (as of 0.012) can do database agnostic in-place schema upgrades! This is something I could never write alone.

Galileo is really optimized for ease of install and use. No need to setup/configure LAMP etc. My primary goal was the "we need a website for this thing NOW" kind of moment. And as to writing in pure HTML, that's fine too, but this is written for users who are not capable of that. Install Galileo for an internal site edited by your secretary or your boss :-P

For truly light-weight (runtime and module sense), you might consider Contenticious which stores markdown in files rather than in a database.